h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Speaking from near personal experience, make sure, when dismounting, that 1/ your skis are pointing forward & 2/ they are not crossed with anyone else's

A collegue of my wife, long time skier (60+ yrs old), had his ski stepped on during dismount. This spun him around & ripped all the ligaments in his knee - he hasn't skied since.

Tgger

Riding a chairlift is a lot like driving a car - you can minimize your risk by being careful, but you can't control what others are doing.

The same goes for skiing down the mountain......

You also can't control centrifigul force.I know,When on a ski trip in Switzerland I ran across a lift that resembled a life preserver on a rope.The idea is to put the "seat" between your legs as the lift pulls you along.Not me.I never got up the slope because as I was placing the rope between my legs the rope gave a sudden jerk and the disk I was to sit on fell between my ankles. Much to my horror I found myself being dragged feet first up the hill.When I attempted a correction I found gravity pulling me off to the side of the hill.When I finally untangled the rope from my feet I found myself skiing backward down the hill until I crashed into a rather large tree.
When I was in Colorado I had received a brand new ski jumpsuit that was made of quite slick rayon.I got onto the lift without incident but again, to my horror, found that as soon as we were at least a thousand feet from the slope that my suit was slicker than snot on a doorknob.I have a bit of acrophobia so my fear was complete as I clung to the side of the chair.Of course, with thick gloves on and having to hold onto my ski poles I found this to be quite a challenge.To make matters worse,we landed at the tip of the mountain where all the trails down were rated from " bone crunching dangerous " to " slightly terrifying ". I have always wanted to snowmobile so I didn't mind the ride to the bottom as I had hugged plenty of trees to that point already.

Ah, the dreaded rope tow. Haven't had to deal with one of those in a while, thank goodness

Sounds like the wonderful 'button' drag system, which is better than the T-bar version -

I think the secret is to hold-on to the button support rod all the time, holding the button into your crotch - The more interesting bit, I find, is getting off them within the minimal space provided at the head of the lift

Tigger